Varanasi is very India. That's about the size of it.

Let me see,

Cow dung in the streets, rickshawsautorickshawsbicyclestrucksholymenandofcoursecows jockeying to get ahead, two chai shops a sweet shop and a general store on every corner, close alleys and dusty roads, monkeys gambolling around on top of walls and through trees, too much yelling, people you've never seen before constantly striking up short-lived conversations with you involving rickshaws, fine clothes and a very good shop they know, people working hard everywhere you look, kites flying from every building-roof, everybody spitting paan as if their tobaccojuice glands are overworking, dogs running everywhere, and a partridge in a pear tree for fifty rupees only.

I could go on but I would end up spitting all over the screen.

The academy we're staying in is still being worked on although it should have been finished in September, because time moves slower in India, presumptively because it gets stuck in traffic like everybody else. We still go over to the house of the Mishras and teach young Indian kids English and also draw with them. They love the drawing. They go crazy for the drawing. You give them crayons and paper and they might as well be eating them for the speed they go through.

We also go down to the river and, well, it's the Ganges. Dirty, mighty, flows through every city worth its dirt, loved and polluted, holy rolling. The city bends to its curve, and as such feeds off of its sanctity. If you walk to Varanasi, you redeem yourself. If you shave your head in Varanasi, you gain favour with the gods. If you die in Varanasi, enlightenment is yours. As you might imagine, this makes for an interesting populace.

There are kites everywhere. Kiting in India is different from the sissified, passive standing-around-and-forgetting-about-it kiting of Canada. In India most people tie their strings to a length of wire coated with ground glass, and then tie that to their kite, then go out on their roof (people in India would be amazed at people in Canada who have never been on their roof or indeed don't go up there on a daily basis), get it flying and then try as hard as possible to cut down other people's kites. Kites are everywhere, yes, flying from rooftops, but also in trees, powerlines and in the street, fallen from the sky. We had about four or five kites cut down by our neighbours. Luckily they're about two rupees each. Harmless fun. The trick is to get your kite to loop around their string, I think.

We have also been privileged to hear some really excellent tabla and sitar playing at the Mishras'. If you want to know what the tabla sounds like without actually bothering to download any Indian music, you could imagine five men tapdancing on a hollow stage. A good tabla player can get this effect with ten fingers and keep at it for hours. The sitar is like a delicate guitar with more notes. Indian music is richer in tones than ours, having not only half-tones but also quarter-tones. It's a bit of a blindspot in our music system. I can't figure out why.

I am richer by one watercolour in this trip. We stopped at Dashaswamedh Ghat - the ghats are platforms clustered on the banks of the river where people pray, live, wash and work. Sitting there we noticed several art students sketching everything around them, and one of them was doing a watercolour sketch. I asked him if he would sell it, and he said he wouldn't, no, but if I liked it he'd give it to me. In return I gave him a haiku, which didn't quite seem fair but was all I could come up with. The strangest transaction I've had on this trip.

The haiku:

Varanasi is
always there; Varanasi
can never be here

Anyways

I am

-Bashu